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Housing project advances

The 54-unit apartment complex, which would be built in west Eugene, is intended to house ex-convicts

By Elon Glucklich

The Register-Guard

Appeared in print: Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015, page B1

A 54-unit apartment plan for ex-criminals is slowly moving forward in west Eugene.

Officials with Housing and Community Services Agency of Lane County and the nonprofit Sponsors Inc. plan to apply for building permits in January, according to recent documents filed with Eugene’s Planning and Development Department.

The apartments, called “The Oaks at W. 14th,” would go up on a 1.5-acre parcel the housing agency bought in Janaury 2014 for $407,000.

The property lies just south of a cul-de-sac on West 14th Avenue, and east of Acorn City Park.

Plans show that the complex would consist of five buildings — two with 10 units, two with 11 units and one with 12 units. A sixth building would house a Sponsors staff member and a Lane County Parole & Probation officer, and serve as a meeting area for residents to get follow-up treatment or meet with potential employers.

The Oaks would be the largest apartment complex offering long-term housing for ex-offenders in Lane County.

Officials hope to start construction in March so tenants can move in around spring 2017, said Jacob Fox, HACSA’s executive director.

“We’re moving full speed ahead,” Fox said.

The project, announced early last year, hasn’t escaped opposition. Some neighbors have bemoaned a project that would put dozes of former convicts such as thieves and drug dealers in a neighborhood of single-family houses, apartments and a park.

After a city hearings official ruled last year the project could be built, two neighbors appealed. But they failed to raise the $1,992 fee needed to bring the issue to the city’s planning commission.

No other appeals have been filed since, associate city planner Zach Galloway said.

Concerns from neighbors are common when Sponsors builds these kinds of projects, said Paul Solomon, the Eugene nonprofit’s executive director.

Sponsors, which provides housing and employment opportunities for people released from Oregon prisons or the Lane County Jail, operates a 28-unit, long-term rental apartment complex on Ferry Street for ex-offenders.

Sponsors also operates a 74-unit transitional complex in west Eugene. But those apartments are just for three to six-month stays, while residents look for longer-term housing.

Housing at The Oaks would only be for male ex-offenders who have completed months of treatment through Sponsors or Lane County Parole & Probation, Solomon said. He said Sponsors has met with neighbors to talk though their concerns and clear up misunderstandings about who might live there.

“We’ve already engaged with neighbors quite a bit,” Solomon said. “This project is for people who have gone through transitional housing or parole and probation. They’ll have to be able to pay their own rent. They’re not a population that’s going to put people at risk.” Monthly rents will be about $450, with tenants paying through employment wages or disability income.

Sponsors will prioritize putting men age 55 or older, ex-offenders with disabilities and military veterans in the units, though others could get in, too.

More than $9 million of the project’s $10 million construction cost will be paid for through federal low-income housing funds. Only convicted arsonists would be banned outright from living in one of the units, Solomon said.

But the three to six months ex-offenders spend in transitional housing or post-release supervision before moving into The Oaks would provide Sponsors enough time to ensure tenants are committed to getting back on track. Tenants in The Oaks will have passed drug and alcohol tests.

The three to six months after release from jail or prison “is the time when people are most likely to recidivate,” Solomon said. “The more we’re able to keep people stabilized during that critical period of time, the easier it is to leverage long-term success.”

Fox said the county housing agency is setting up a citizen’s advisory committee to update neighbors and address their concerns about the project. The group should start meeting next month.

“I think with any special population, like the chronically homeless or developmentally disabled, it’s important we educate neighbors about the needs of the population,” Fox said.

Tenants could live at The Oaks indefinitely. But Solomon said the hope is residents will live there a year or two before moving on to more permanent housing.

“We’re really working to take these people from a place of homelessness and indigence to self-sufficiency,” he said.